Hilarious and Obscure Doodles from the 13th and 14th Centuries
“TIL drawings of battles between knights and snails appear in the margins of many texts from the 13th and 14th centuries. There is no known explanation for the meaning behind this recurring depiction.” – Obscure Fact by thewolfwasirish. There is no funnier rivalry than an armored knight and an overgrown snail. And thanks to these random texts, they will forever be recorded in history.
While there is very little to know about the reason for such a fierce competition between snail and knight, it might be fun to dive into a few more contextual facts of the era. With such a mysterious air behind the illustrations, it hasn’t kept historians from speculating on the symbolism of these doodles. The British Library says that the scene could represent the Resurrection, or it could be a stand in for the Lombards, “a group vilified in the early middle ages for treasonous behavior, the sin of usury, and ‘non-chivalrous comportment in general.'” The Smithsonian Magazine covered this topic: “Lisa Spangenberg floated another idea. She says that ‘the armored snail fighting the armored knight is a reminder of the inevitability of death,’ a sentiment captured in Psalm 58 of the bible: ‘Like a snail that melteth away into slime, they shall be taken away; like a dead-born child, they shall not see the sun.’ “